


See, I'm Smiling

by Carbocat



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Arrow 3x19, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, The Flash 1x18 (mentioned)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 10:25:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3847417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbocat/pseuds/Carbocat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem wasn't that he was Ray, the problem was that he wasn't Oliver.</p>
            </blockquote>





	See, I'm Smiling

For as long as he could remember, his father had said he was too much for some people, too much energy, too much talking, too much smiling. He had been told to tone it down, to hold back, to be less. Stop smiling, stop talking, stay on topic, be direct, sit still, stop embarrassing yourself Ray (stop embarrassing him went unsaid but he had got the message loud and clear). His mother, for just as long, had said he just got excited and that there was nothing wrong with that.

His dad said it put people off; his mom said that it didn’t matter, not everybody got everybody. Like Mr. Fan, down the road who mowed his grass in his underwear, right Sunshine? Why’d he do that?

And she would tell him with a kiss on the top of his head when he shrugged his shoulders and hid his smile that he was perfect just the way he was.

“One day,” she would say, “the right person will come along and see that.”

You just have to wait for the right person, she reassured him when his girlfriend dumped him for his best friend the night before junior prom. Just be yourself, she repeated over and over when yet another club deemed him too pretty, too rich, too geeky, too _Ray_ to sit with them at lunch. You’re perfect the way you are, she comforted when he brought up medication once more to make him a little less _this_.

Never stop smiling, my little ray of sunshine, she told him long after he stopped being so little, long after he needed it, and continued to say it after everything got so much worse.

Get up, go back to work, take a shower, eat, do something Raymond, his dad had said standing in the doorway to his old room with his arms crossed and a lecture that was not being heard. And he would leave with that same defeated looked across his face, like when Ray skipped basketball try-outs to go to the planetarium without telling anyone.

“The funeral is tomorrow,” he said to him in a calm quiet voice. He needed to be fitted for a new suit.

He turned his back to the door and pulled the thick heavy blanket over his head in response, blocking out the noise, his father, and the days to come.

“She’s gone.”

It was the first thing he had said since showing up on their doorstep four days ago after being unreachable for days, after they had thought the worse, and calls to the SCPD were left with dial tones, calling waiting, and no answers on their son’s whereabouts. Arriving with a broken cell phone to match his broken leg and his broken heart, his eyes were red-rimmed and he couldn’t get his lip to stop quivering. Without Anna, for the worse _had_ happened.

His voice felt flat, exhausted, in a way it never had before. Cracking like glass with the weight of the realization, it sounded so easily broken, and void of his usual charm, wit, and enthusiasm. He felt cold, empty, like someone else; he supposed he was someone else now.

There was no one around to hear him because she was _gone._ He couldn’t save her.

“Anna!”

It was the second thing he said, voice horse, dry, and choked with emotion – with anger, fear, desperation. He pulled his arm roughly out of the almost painful grip on it and shoved hard at the chest of his attacker. His hands had formed clumsy fist and his mouth twisted into an ugly sneer; he was breathing too hard, much too hard. An unhelpful part of his mind supplied the words ‘you’re hyperventilating, you idiot’ but no way of stopping it.

It was dark and he couldn’t see her, could see his Anna. He couldn’t catch a glimpse of her curls or her dark beautiful eyes amongst the moving shadows. He couldn’t see her or feel her hand in his, he couldn’t–

“Ray,” it was said softly, a faraway whisper in the darkness. Then there was light, blinding, burning, and when he opened his eyes again the dirty alleyway had faded into dark blue walls and Doctor Who posters.

He unclenched his fist, and his eyes darted around the room, she wasn’t there. Anna wasn’t there and that small part of him that had stupidly thought, had hoped against all hope, that it was her who had called his name broke just a little bit more.

“I–”

He still felt the pressure of that monster’s hand around his neck, felt the ache of bruises long faded, and the grinding of his tibia and fibula as his leg was crushed under a boot. His ears rung still with the deafening crack of Anna’s – what happened?

“I–” he tried again gulping down oxygen until he choked, then laughed. When had he started to cry?

“It’s okay.”

He felt fingers in his hair, working through limp dirty strains and, coaxing him to breathe, telling him to let it out. Whispering to him that it was okay, everyone was okay, that he was okay.

“It was just a nightmare,” she whispered softly to him, guiding him back under the covers, wiping the tears from his eyes. “You’re safe, Sunshine, everything’s okay.”

It wasn’t, he wanted to say when she kissed the top of his head and exhaustion unwillingly pulled him towards sleep. It wasn’t okay. It would never be okay, not without her, not without Anna.

It was autopilot, he told himself as he went through the motions of showering, shaving, buttoning and zipping a suit that had once been too big but now fit uncomfortably. It was all just muscle memory, he thought as he stared at his gaunt and ghostly expression in the mirror tightening his tie. This was what happened when your mind didn’t run at a million miles an hour, when it skidded to a halt with a resounding _I can’t do this_.

He stood stock still, stoic, and straight-faced like he had never been before, by the side of his parents as they greeted half their wedding guest list – friends, colleagues, and Anna’s distant relatives he never had to chance to meet – taking comfort only in the fact that Anna’s parents never lived to see this day. He accepted condolences with thanks yous he didn’t mean for kind words he didn’t hear. He shook off flashbacks with every hug he didn’t want to give, hid trimmers with every handshake he shook too quickly, but he couldn’t bring himself to smile back no matter how thin. Anna always said, had always said to be nice so he said his thanks, politely declined inquiries about his injuries, about what happened, and endured their pity because Anna would have wanted him to play nice.

She said to be brave – when he was nervous for his first speech in their public speaking class in college, when she took the engagement ring from his pocket and shoved it into his hand, in that alleyway – so he stood before their black hats and sad eyes and talked. He told them how great she was, the greatest he’d ever known, how she was his tour guide at the gala, and how he accidently held her up for hours talking about a Raphael. How she kissed him first, on the cheek before accepting the date he had been too anxious to ask her out on.

He told them how she took a boy who never fit in and made him into a man confident enough to stand out. He told them how kind she was and smart, how she kicked his ass in Classical Mechanics, and how she gave the best high-fives. How she wanted to save the world, and how he first knew he loved her in the setting sun of Venice, how they dreamed of owning their own company, taking Ivy Town into the future, and how they were supposed to become professors at their alma mater in their old age.

He told them how brave she was, to the very end, so, so brave, and how sorry he was, so truly sorry that he couldn’t, that he wasn’t strong enough to save her. And he told them how much he loved her and still loved her and would always love her until he could do nothing more than weep because she was very truly gone and there was nothing he could do about it. She was in that box with the blank face and the make-up covered bruises and it was his fault.

His weeping turned to sobs because it was supposed to be a simple business meeting for a deal they had already secured. She wasn't supposed to be there but he had asked her, begged her to come with him. Now she was dead and he wasn’t. It was unfair, so unfair, because she wasn’t supposed to be there and he couldn’t save her, and he was so, so, so sorry.

He remembered, hazily, like he was watching from very far away, being dragged from the podium, from the casket, from Anna. How everyone looked away respectfully, then stared in open curiosity as he fell to pieces because he couldn’t just shut up, saying all the words that he had held in since waking up as a John Doe in some Starling City hospital.

He remembered being forced to sit with his head between his legs as he breathed too quickly and how he couldn’t stop the tears that fell or horrible whimpering that escaped his throat. He remembered sitting there, long after she had been buried with welted white lilies in his hands, in wet soil, trying his hardest to work up a smile.

He remembered being told to get up, that he had ruined his suit, that he was embarrassing himself (embarrassing his father was left unsaid but Ray didn’t care). He was told he had to move on, continue living when the best he had ever known was below his feet. He was told that Anna wouldn’t want this by people who did not love her like he did, who didn’t know her like he did. And it hurt so much because she wouldn’t want him to be this mess that he was, but he didn’t know if he could be anything else.

Anna had told him to be brave, to never stop fighting, and to never ever stop being Ray.

The next day, he woke up, he got dressed, he brushed his teeth, and he smiled.

He walked into work, moved past his coworkers with the help of the crutches, and he smiled, big, bright, and fake. He continued to smile when he walked past his father’s secretary and into the board meeting he should have been attending.

And he smiled, as he handed in his resignation. Smiled more when he farewelled all the people who whispered behind his back that he only ran the science division because his father owned the company with a polite ‘I hope that someday Palmer Tech will do business with you.’

And he smiled, and never stopped smiling until it felt genuine again, until the enthusiasm returned and his company was what they had dreamed about. He worked, and worked, and worked, driven by her vision of a better tomorrow and his of a safer today.

He visited her often, replaced the flowers that welted too soon, told her about new ideas, buying a mine, buying his father’s company, and his brief stint as a physic professor. He told her about the O.M.A.C. suit, then the A.T.O.M. suit and how he couldn’t quite get it up and running. He knew she’d have the solution, but this one he had to get on his own. He whispered plans of going back to Starling City, to save the city like he couldn’t save her, and how he knew just the way to do it.

He told her how he still wasn’t with someone despite his father giving his number to every girl with a decent IQ and his mother’s insistence that he needed to find someone before he spent his entire life in his lab, but he couldn’t. Not yet, not ever.

He knew – I know Ann – that she wouldn’t want him to stall, to not be living his life to its fullest, but it was only her. It had always been her. She was the one he wanted, the only one he needed. She was the right person.

Only some times and only some person were lucky enough to find that person, the right one who let you be yourself and loved all that was too much about you.

He found that person.

And now she was dead.

He knew he’d never find someone like that ever again.

Then he met Felicity.

Felicity, who was too clever, too loyal, too inclined to ramble on. Smart in a way that tended to get the over-enthused in trouble, smart in that way he just loved.

He never meant to kiss her. Hell, he just wanted her help and then everything went sideways. He felt like he broke his promise to Anna, like he betrayed her and her love for him and his for her. And he panicked, rushed away from Felicity and didn’t stop rushing until he was spilling his guts to a dusty headstone in the middle of the night. Then he was spilling his guts to Felicity in a night club he didn’t want to be in, opening old wounds that weren’t quite healed to begin with and frowning for what felt like the first time since the funeral.

Somehow, some way, everything progressed to this. He kissed Felicity again, and some more after that. He got the A.T.O.M. Suit to work and his first thought was to tell Felicity, not Anna and it felt like she was slipping from him. Oliver Queen was the Arrow and he was killing people, they fought, his suit got ruined, and he felt powerless all over again. He met The Flash and Harrison Wells, and it ached in his heart that Anna couldn’t be there to meet her idol but only faintly. Then he had an arrow through him, and he found that he didn’t really mind the blood clot that was going to kill him. Then untested nanotech from his lab ran through his blood, and he was so very grateful that he took his mother off his emergence contacts.

She had saved him and kissed him.

And he told her he loved her. She didn’t say it back and he had tried to make it better, to take it back, make it less weird, less awkward. He didn’t want to pressure her but he didn’t understand why he felt all of this and she didn’t.

He wasn’t stupid, he knew that. But man, it sometimes felt that way. He had though he had left the insecurity and feelings of inadequacy back in high school, but seeing Felicity look at Oliver Queen with the same adoration that he looked at Anna with made him feel like he was facing down the football team all over again.

He never stood a chance.

She didn’t say I love you back, in any variation of capitalization, because she couldn’t say it, because she didn’t love him back.

He tore himself to pieces trying to find out why? And he couldn’t come up with another reason other than that he was Ray Palmer and he was always just _too much_ , too much smiles, high-fives, and money, too much talking, intensity, and science. He put people off, he embarrassed people without noticing, he was the problem.

But he could see it now.

The problem wasn’t that he was too much this, too much that, too much Ray.

The problem was that he wasn’t Oliver.

 


End file.
